Study on morphological and structural properties of silver plating on laser etched silicon

•Preparation of well-controlled porous Si (PSi) substrate for metal ion reductions•Efficient way to controlling pore size in PSi via adjusting laser power density•Simple fabrication process for nano silver/PSi used in chemical detection•Well organized and control process for silver ion reduction just inside pore volume

The immersion-plating method for the preparation of silver nanoparticles is highly selected because it has the virtue of simplicity and lower cost. Silver nanoparticles features deposition onto a porous silicon (PSi) layer from aqueous solutions of two silver salt (AgNO3) concentration 10− 2 M, and 5 × 10− 3 M were studied. The PSi was prepared by laser assisted etching technique for illumination laser intensity of 5 to 20 mW/cm2. The average pore sizes were 0.66, 1.45, 1.71, and 1.79 μm respectively. Structural and morphological characterizations of PSi samples before and after dipping were studied through analyzing of scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) pattern. These measurements showed that silver nanoparticles were in different sizes and distribution. This difference depends on the illumination laser Intensity used in the etching process. It was found that silver planes, grain size, specific surface area, and nucleation sites of silver nanoparticles strongly depended on PSi morphology and silver salt concentrations.

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